The Challenge of Commercializing Technology

• Doing commercialization well is challenging, and requires skills that are often not resident in not-for-profits

• A few universities have successful programs to commercialize technology, but most fall notably short of their potential

  • The top 150 universities in the U.S. conduct over $30 billion per year in research, yet license revenue from the resulting intellectual property averages only about 3% of that amount

  • However, this average is heavily skewed by the top 20 universities, where licensing revenue averages 9% of amounts spent on research

  • The lower-ranked half of universities have licensing revenue averaging only 0.3% of amounts spent on research; if they were to realize the average of the top 20 universities, they would see an incremental $630 million in licensing revenue

• Similarly, hospitals and research institutes have yet to achieve their full potential in commercialization

  • The top 32 hospitals and reserach institutes in the U.S. conduct over $3.2 billion per year in research, yet license revenue from the resulting intellectual property averages only about 8% of that amount